


Starring Role (In Your Fantasies)

by Half_SubmergedinPurgatory



Series: Starring Role [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Antagonizing people by being hot, Biting, Choking, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Multi, Oral Sex, Porn With Plot, Possessive Behavior, Reclaimation of Sexuality, Sexual Tension, Smut, Some BDSM and Control Overtones, Woman on Top, sharing is caring, some voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-03-23 02:44:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13777998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Half_SubmergedinPurgatory/pseuds/Half_SubmergedinPurgatory
Summary: Toni Stark was used to being wanted by people who thought she owed them something. People who thought they could own her, use her, take her heart home with them at the end of the night. Well, jokes on them. She’ll never be number one in their heart, but she would take a starring role in all their fantasies, even if they never got to touch her. She would ruin them for everybody that comes after her.Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers had it coming.





	1. Starring Role

When Toni turned 16, the whispers began. Her Spanish heritage was obvious, they said, in her seductive gaze. Sweet ( ** _seductive_** ) 16.   
  
At 17, the media started a countdown to her becoming 'legal'. She spit fiery vitriol at that, letting acid drip from unpainted lips and nails ( _a form of rebellion against those who wanted a sex kitten, a slutty little symbol, who wanted any excuse to pretend she was older than she was. It didn’t work_ ). Her anger was turned against her - it was just as sexy as she was ( _“A spitfire! All latinas are passionate, though it looks good on a fake one like Stark, too.” That one comment in a sea of similar ones was lodged in her heart for good. She never got to know Maria’s heritage, not really, not when her mother was vacant and drugged and alone in a way Toni was terrified of, in a way the world practically salivated over_ ).

At 18, she fucked the first intelligent man she could get her hands on ( _a physicist who talked to her at length about trying to become an astronomer. She was glad he never got to change fields, that fucking dick_ ). She was proving something - taking away her virginity before the public could ( _before their words and ideas and fantasies could pry it from her cold dead fingers_ ). When he released an expose and the men of America crowed in shared pride ( _their strength and power irresistible to a young whore like her_ ), she fell into the bed of a woman 10 years older and 10 times richer than she was. She kept Toni’s fumbling attempts at sexual confidence a secret, so Toni took another woman and another to bed until somebody finally ( _mercifully_ ) stabbed her in the back.

After that, people were angry. They were always angry ( _not a virgin, not a mother, not exclusive to men, not CARING what they thought_ ). So Toni hit strip club after strip club, taking all the girls home who felt the same rage she did - she needed somebody to teach her how to **use** this. How to use those bonds, those patronizing attitudes about her body, so that the world couldn’t consume her.

She was a quick study. Strippers kept her secrets more closely than anyone who had ever  'seduced' her ( _maybe a few had, back when she was young enough to believe in something like **want** , back when she had wanted something more than to just own herself_). They kept her frustrated tears ( _strap-ons were surprisingly hard to use gracefully, certain kinds of lube were allergens, certain toys were great at tangling her long curly spill of hair. Mistakes were made_ ) to themselves, long after lovers and confidants had sold her out. 

When she travelled, she started hitting every red light district ( _both legal and illegal_ ). It built her reputation as **filth** , but it taught her more than the performance ( _poise, grace, strength, and charisma_ ) of the top escorts of the States could.  
  
Amsterdam taught her pleasure and indulgence ( _and how to pick pockets, the calming nature of humour in bed, how to escape somebody who wouldn’t take no for an answer as gracefully as possible_ ).  
  
Taipei taught her unyielding authority over her own body ( _Taipei also taught her the law, taught her rage, taught her how to kill a man who deserved to die and how to hire on secretaries with questionable pasts. Taipei set a precedent for a little tech company that Toni would never ever come clean about opening_ ).  
  
Bangkok taught her about leaving her body at the door and wearing her mind as a sex symbol instead ( _how to enter the room with masculine authority, to slip that off to pool on the floor as she embodied feminine care, kicking that off to become something entirely **other** and unstoppable_ ).  
  
Pigalle let her learn about all the parts of her body people could fall in love with ( _all of them. Utilize all of them, Toni, even the delicate arch of the tips of your ears_ ) and how to seduce a woman with a hip swivel alone.

Hamburg made her give up on the idea of making every partner cum, or even making herself cum, in a damn good session. Hamburg taught her how to grab hold of somebody’s heart and mind, how to make them kneel, and how to make them beg ( _past the silk stuffed in their mouth, past the ropes binding their hands, past the overwhelming sensation of candle wax dripping down their back_ ). Hamburg was good to her. Hamburg let her be creative with her mind in ways she hadn’t been since Bangkok tried to show her she was more than just a woman.

Villa Tinto was her pièce de résistance. By the time she swept through Belgium, JARVIS was in her pocket and safety was more of a concern than ever ( _she was 26, kidnappers were just more men who thought they owned her, and they seemed to grow more numerous by the day. They were hard to separate from the average bedfellow_ ). Here she learned about security and how to conceal it. Here she learned how to be deadly in a way that appeared, even as someone was dragged away to jail or beaten by a bouncer, totally benign.  
  
Safe, clean, high tech.  
  
She loved Villa Tinto ( _there was a woman there who was an amateur polymer chemist. Her lubricants were a work of art - flavoured without being sweet enough to cause problems. Toni had spent the better part of a day keeping her tongue occupied_ ).

  
_______

 

Toni owned herself and **nothing** could take that away from her. So of course, somebody tried.  
  
Somebody always tried, in the end. 

_______

  


Her time with the Ten Rings challenged everything she had ever known. About herself, about her body ( _oh god, oh god, an electromagnet was buried in her chest and she had been CHANGED_ ), and about her business.   
  
About who she let into her life.  
  
After Afghanistan, she didn’t let people back into her bed for a long time ( _the arc reactor a glaring vulnerability and proof that people could **change** her. That her bodily autonomy could be taken away, even if she would always ALWAYS get it back_ ). Eventually, instead of simply faking it ( _seducing drunks into her home to sleep on the couch under JARVIS’ watchful gaze_ ), she returned to Villa Tinto. She let the prostitutes help her get to know her body again. How to weaponize her weaknesses. How to turn pleasure into an iron core of strength.

Even with the armour off, she was never truly without it ( _she was Iron Woman, through and through. And when she wasn’t quite all there, JARVIS would guard her back_ ).

_______

Never being without armour had its consequences. Not the consequences of an iron core, no, it was her palladium that was a bitch. Black veins of sickness refused to be concealed, but Toni refused to give up. She had spent so much time taking her body back, reshaping and molding it into something she could recognize, that she wasn’t willing to let it go now.   
  
She wasn't willing to let it go ever. The whole fucking world could try to rip it from her cold dead fingers.

When SHIELD showed up with their treatment and their manipulations ( _and a woman who had a look in her eyes that Toni recognized. A woman who would have fit right in at a tech company in Taipei nobody ever talked about. It’s too bad that JARVIS had caught Natasha before she could become a secretary_ ), the palladium was out on display, weaving between a garden of geometric blossoms ( _tattoos from Portland - bleeding heart, poppies, forget-me-nots, and a dozen other things picked for her by her boys. Dum-E and U had some eccentric selections, but her artist made them work, grumbling about the risks of tattooing around blood poisoning. Strippers kept Toni's secrets though, especially when it landed them the job of their dreams_ ). The poisoning looked like it belonged there to the untrained eye. It had even fooled SHIELD for awhile, if Nicky-Nick’s hasty application of a second needle said anything.

When the poisoning was taken care of, Toni got her artist to use the new reactors shape to spread her chest piece into shoulder caps and a wreath around her collar. She also let him etch the palladium veins back in ( _a permanent reminder that death was always knocking on her doorstep, a permanent reminder of her ownership over it_ ).

Sprawling tattoos were the latest celebrity trend from the moment he finished. Weeks later, tabloids were still trying to get snaps of how far her tattoos really extended under her collar ( _they wrapped comfortably around her breasts, thin vines sneaking down to her hips. Everybody had heard of them, many people had run their tongues over them, but not a soul had proof. Never let it be said Toni and JARVIS were above petty pleasures_ ).

_______  


Vanko happened. The Mandarin happened. Pepper happened, and for once in her life, Toni felt like more than a sharply-honed blade. Then Pepper stopped happening ( _or rather, Toni stopped inflicting herself on her_ ), and Toni’s dull edges were taken to the whetstone all over again.  
  
And, rising like the sun over it all, the Avengers burst into Toni’s life.

Steve Rogers had barely made a blip beyond the sea of Howard-related rage he dragged out of her ( _a tidal wave drowning out a rainstorm_ ). She had been with Pepper, faithful to a fault ( _compromising all the seductive techniques that had kept the press at bay, kept her detractors satisfied, kept stupid men from making stupider decisions about her_ ), and Steve's 1940s sensibilities hadn’t been worth the energy. Fast-N-Furious had apparently known better than to include her sexual history in Steve's debriefing, probably knowing that it was Toni’s best, brightest, and most patented weapon. It was funny, really, to see the confusion in Steve's eyes after Toni was single and ready to mingle with half of New York.

It was less funny when that confusion turned to disapproval ( _with an edge of something **more**_ ). 

Less funny and more...challenging.

_______

  
The villains were the first to get a taste of the most destructive thing Toni had ever created. Her body was a razor's edge, and arrogant prideful people were drawn to it like a magnet. Loki liked to play games, was easily manipulated into cat and mouse, and was even more easily drawn in by a clever tongue. Toni toyed with him, insulting him with classical poetry and Norse myths (" _A horse, Darling? If I had've known you were such a size queen, I would've made a nice addition to this armour. Bet it would've kept you down for days._ ") while letting him snatch away her faceplate. She made him laugh while she licked blood from her lips. She made him pause in interest when she let loose with scathing sarcasm ( _"You know, a beautiful woman is the ultimate source of chaos. Helen of Troy, Aphrodite, the Fates themselves...I think I could make a better Mischief Maker than you. Don't you agree? I know the media does."_ ).   
  
When he was well and truly distracted, she chucked him through a building. Steve had screamed himself hoarse during the debriefing, then screamed himself silent when Loki escaped his prison to specifically declare a desire for the drink she'd promised him ages ago. Toni had simply reclined in silence, sipping her drink and letting the condensation slide down her long fingers ( _that Steve's eyes couldn't help but track. She'd seen him draw her hands before_ ).   
  
Later, Toni pulled Natasha into sparring match after sparring match until something finally clicked ( _Natasha really would've fit right in with her Taipei girls. Toni wanted to introduce them_ ). Their matches quickly descended into something more than violence. They still ended in blood and bruises, but they took on a more...performative quality.   
  
Natasha's thighs would wrap around her neck and Toni would let herself fall to the mats, straining her hips upward as she tried to turn over, tilting them to show off the strength in her body ( _abs flexing, thighs trembling_ ). Toni would rake her nails down Natasha's arms before throwing her to the side, leaving red trails in her wake that drew the eye. A high kick would bring an enemy's focus to smooth unblemished skin and wide hips. A punch would follow a line from delicately sloping shoulders and sharply cut waists. They pushed each other to fight on an entirely different strategic level (" _The Red Room trained us to be beautiful in battle." Natasha told her, picking the blood out from underneath her nails, "So that those who watched us fight would not see our tactics. They would simply see our bodies and think they knew us._ "). Steve stopped trying to watch over them pretty quickly, but it took a broken nose for Clint to surrender. 

Later still, Toni pulled Steve into a different kind of fight. She used him as a buffer at galas, dancing with him, bringing him drinks, sitting by his side with a challenge in her eyes ( _"Try to keep disliking me." It said, though she felt more and more often these days that that had never been the case to begin with, not when Steve was always...there_ ). When his walls finally started collapsing, when he brought her non-alcoholic drinks with a serious frown of disapproval ( _whispering "It's just soda, don't worry." In her ear_ ), when he laughed at her jokes and called her "Toni" instead of "Antonia", she played him off to go make Johnny Storm kneel for her in the hallway ( _pressing heated kissed to her thighs and sneaking his hands under her skirt_ ).  
  
That evening, she took nobody home with her, just because she could.   
  
That evening, she fucked herself stupid, soaking her sheets with sweat and ruining a perfectly good manicure. She left her room in the morning reeking of sex, ate her toast and grapes with her now short-nailed fingers, and ignored the way Steve spilled orange juice all over the counter ( _swearing violently, almost slapping himself in the face, and fleeing the room entirely_ ).   
  
After that, her interactions with Steve slip purely into some twisted form of sexual antagonism ( _"He doesn't get to tell me how to live my fucking life, JARVIS! Heh, fucking life, he- WOAH, HEY, DON'T CRASH THE SUIT, I'M SORRY-"_ ). And then...  
  
Bucky Barnes enters the scene.

 

_______

  


Bucky has lost his bodily autonomy a thousand times over. He’s slept with marks, he’s murdered indiscriminately, and he’s been forced to comply again and again and again. He's been bent, drawn into razor thin wire, and melted down into nothing. But he hasn't been broken. 

Toni looks at him and sees herself. To her horror, she sees how Steve interacts with him, too ( _a different man than she remembered, so much more than before_ ). She sees them both, this time with no illusions in the way.

Bucky is an endless well of strength, good to his goddamn core even if it had been twisted a few times too many for most people's tastes ( _Toni thinks of men who deserve to die and smiles with too many teeth. She’ll keep Bucky’s secrets, even if she won’t give him hers_ ). Steve is a steadfast presence at his side, keeping him together with the kind of love and easy affection Toni had only ever had with Rhodey. He picks a fight with everyone and anyone, rising to every single challenge that comes his way like there was never any other option, and it charms her. _On va voir_ , the whores in France would love his attitude and so does she ( _he’s vibrant in a way he never was before Barnes. He’s alive. He digs his heels in for equality, takes the time to learn about the future, thrusts himself into her life like a plane spiralling out of control_ ).

They are both terribly lonely. It pulls at her. It draws her in. A razor's edge to a magnet.

** She's terrified. **

They are both **so easy** to love. They know this. She knows this.  
  
So, of course, they expect her to love them, too ( _jokes on them, Toni doesn't even love herself_ ).

  


_______

  
Toni Stark was used to being wanted by people who thought she owed them something. People who thought they could own her, use her, take her heart home with them at the end of the night. She didn’t give her heart to anyone, though. Instead, she reached right into their chest and ruined them for anyone who came after her.

And people **always** came after her.  


The Brooklyn boys wouldn’t be any different.

  


_______

 

Fucking fed up with a battle that had been raging for 6 hours ( _on no sleep!!!_ ), Toni just wanted to end it and go back to bed. The second she sees an opportunity, she takes it. She smashes the villain of the week ( _some no name loser she couldn't care less about_ ) into the ground and steps on his chest, prying her helmet off as she does ( _she always preferred her menacing eye to eye_ ).

”Stay down, darlin’.”  
  
She purrs, shifting her armoured heel down from his chest to grind into his crotch ( _just shy of pain, just shy of over 400 pounds of force_ ). The man whimpers, but he’s not the only one.

Bucky is watching her through his scope. Maybe he’d been trying to tell her about his shot, considering he’d activated his com, or maybe he wanted Toni to catch him sounding a few strokes off from cumming ( _maybe Bucky liked being a bad dog? She'd have to look into that_ ). Toni observed his position coolly, flicking on her own com line.

"What’re you getting all excited for?”  
  
She asks the villain under her ( _and Bucky, since he was eavesdropping_ ), letting her voice drop into a register that reminded her of Germany ( _silk ropes, tight leather cuffs, a collar chained to the wall_ ),  
  
“You’re beneath me. You’d have to beg if you ever wanted me to touch your pathetic dick again.”

Bucky’s breath catches and she flicks the com line off. Her work here was done. 

_______

 

Toni dukes it out with Steve on the mats ( _since he seemed convinced she was obsessed with removing her armour mid-battle, leaving herself 'vulnerable' and 'weak_ '). Since they’re taking it easy ( _or rather, Steve was. She didn't appreciate the patronizing_ ), she moves a little slower, taking more time to angle herself ( _show off her abs, let the light catch on her biceps, pool in the hollows of her collarbones_ ). She hisses when Steve lands a particularly straight on hit to her back. She moans, low and long, when he manages to get an arm to wrap crushingly tight around her waist in preparation for a tackle. His blue gaze flicks to her face for a moment and, seeing her chance, she tilts her head, opening her lips ever so slightly, panting from exertion...

He swallows as his eyes follow a drop of sweat rolling down her neck. In Steve's moment of distraction, Toni takes his legs right out from under him. She sits on his chest when she wins, petite body fitting there perfectly ( _painting an image for him of the afterglow, what she would look like curled up against him - she knew exactly how men like Steve Rogers thought_ ). She  braces a hand on his hips when she stands up ( _she can feel the heat radiating from his crotch. From how tight his muscles were, he was already half hard_ ) and smirks in victory, even if it feels just the slightest bit hollow.

_______  


Toni leads the Brooklyn Boys by the nose while they’re on a variety show. She flirts, she teases, she draws them out of their shell with a hand on either of their knees. They respond to it beautifully ( _her heart aches with it. Could they ever be friends? Could she ever be friends with somebody who wanted her?_ ).

She braids Bucky's hair while the host times her and a panel judges how intricate her work is. Thor has been an excellent teacher - there’s no way she won’t win this challenge, so she can take her time. She hums happily as her nails scratch along Bucky's scalp, tugging his hair firmly into place, creating a wreath around his head, a fishtail down his neck ( _that she wraps her hands around from behind as Bucky leans in all the way, settling his broad back firmly against her legs, eyes fluttering shut_ ), and tiny loops around his ears. Steve watches her hands as she splays her fingers, twirling Bucky's silk-soft strands around them, showing off the delicate bone structure there and her hard calluses. She knows how much Steve loves contrast ( _she'd learned somewhere along the line that it was best for charcoal shading. She'd bought Steve an entire charcoal set before she'd jammed it under her couch to forget about_ ).

Bucky leans back against her even more heavily, a groan rumbling through his chest as her fingers smooth along his temples to draw back all the fine hairs there. There’s a dopey smile of his face that makes her grin despite herself. It draws Steve's attention away from her hands to her face, and they look helplessly at each other for a moment ( _Bucky was cute like this, loose and happy like a cat in front of a warm fire_ ).

The host laughs;  
  
“He looks like he’ll start purring any second. Are these the magic fingers I've heard so much about, Iron Woman?”

It takes Toni a full second to realize the host, a gorgeous woman in her early 40s with ink black hair and even darker eyes, is flirting with her _(referencing an article from long before Pepper, one where Toni's hands had been down somebody's-_ ). She’d been just as drawn in by the show as Steve, but unlike him she hadn’t snapped out of it at the sight of a smile. A thread of self consciousness tries to wrap around Toni’s throat, but she covers it by grinding her thumbs in just behind Bucky’s ears. He slits an eye open and starts purring for real, smile just this side of sharp, and Toni keeps her hands to herself for the rest of the show

_______  


At a gala, Toni switches partners all night, refusing to let herself fall into Steve and Bucky's arms. They watch her from the corners of the room, refusing any and all partners, waiting for an opening that will never come. Their gazes feel like a physical touch, warming her from her toes to the tips of her ears (“ _You’re blushing,” Her partner whispers, splaying his fingers over her hips and sliding them just enough to cup the swell of her ass, “Is it the wine or is it me?” Her laugh is throaty and rich, “Why not both?” She asks, swivelling her hips in his grip so his hands fall even further, “Though I wouldn’t have to fill my mouth with wine if something better were available.”_ ).

The band moves through jazz, swing, golden oldies in honour of the Brooklyn Boys, and more modern music. Occasionally requests sweep the floor, changing tunes abruptly enough that half the dancers leave ( _those who stay want to prove something about viral marketing, Toni swears. Trying to keep up with the latest crazes that they were too damn old for_ ).

Toni presses tightly against her partner for a tango, sliding her thigh between theirs, brushing her teeth against their neck, delicately kissing their ear. She leads them across the floor with a predatory smile that widens with every step. She loves pushing people into a corner.

Abruptly, the song changes, and Toni throws her head back with a disbelieving chuckle as one of her favourites starts up.

The slow heavy beat is perfectly mirrored by footsteps headed her way. She slowly unwinds her arms from her partner’s shoulders, letting them slide down the smooth fabric of his jacket. The golden rings on her fingers flash, the chains connecting them to her equally gold silk dress go taunt, pressing tight to her skin ( _gold on gold on gold - emphasizing the fact that she was a damn treasure_ ). Those steps stuttered and so did her traitorous heart.

” _Give me forever for awhile..._ ”  
  
The band crooned as she kissed her partner softly on the cheek, ignoring the presence pressing a hot line up her spine ( _she knew a backless dress was a damn good choice. It showed off a dozen of her worst scars, twisting amongst the thorny stems her tattoo artist had begun planting there, growing right up from the base of her spine into a splash of wine-colored roses_ ). A  hand pressed into one of those blooms ( _just above the biomonitor JARVIS had pressed into its heart, one that was probably going crazy right now_ ) and Toni inclined her head ( _a tumble of curls slipping over her shoulder and begging those fingers to tangle in it_ ).

  
” _Swear to god I’m a sinner in a church burning up for you..._ ”

She took a step back, hooking an ankle around a muscular leg outfitted in bespoke Tom Ford. She used it to turn her whole body, pressing her palms flat against a broad chest ( _that contained a racing heartbeat to match her own_ ).

”I thought you didn’t dance, Handsome.”  
  
She murmured, tucking her chin just beneath Steve’s and watching his pulse jump in his neck. She was tempted to brush her lips against it, but that would be giving herself too much ( _loosening the leash she kept wound tightly around her own weaker impulses_ ). Instead she looked just past Steve to the sidelines, grinning wickedly at Bucky as Steve's hands settled politely at her waist.

_ ”She’s a blessing and a curse...” _

”Can’t an old dog learn new tricks?”  
  
Steve said dryly and oooooh, he had no idea where she could take that. He had no idea what the challenge there did to her. He would learn, though.

On the next beat, she stepped back, and he chased her body heat. She was a good foot shorter than him even in heels, but she was going to make this work.

”Keep your eyes on me. Look away and I’ll walk away.”  
  
She said, tugging his hips against hers, melding them together tightly even as her torso bent away.  
  
“Keep looking, Captain.”  
  
She urged him, spreading her thighs just a bit over his knee, slitted silk dress sliding easily out of the way and exposing red garters.  
  
“It’s alright if you blush,”  
  
She ground her hips forward, turning them in a figure eight that had Steve gasping,  
  
“All virgins blush.”

Steve growled ( _that joke got him every time_ ) and stepped forward. She followed him exactly, preventing him from touching her with more than the barest brush of thigh. Her hand curled around the back of his neck, drawing his focus back to the space between their hips as she stepped in circles that just barely kept him away ( _he pushed forward, forward, constantly trying to close that distance in a way that had her grinning_ ). His shoulders curled forwards and his off-hand snatched hers, pressing it close to his chest as his fingers flexed against her bare back.  
  
His movements weren't perfect, but this was a dance best felt, not learned.

Toni twisted her waist, drawing his hands away, and he paced around her in a tight circle, pulling her in until his nose was buried in her hair ( _he drew in a thick breath, his chest expanding to brush against hers_ ). She turned her back to him, chuckling at his huff of frustration, and let her spine ripple like water ( _her body flowing to connect their hips again_ ). She felt the contact like a live wire, Steve’s hand moving from her waist to push down on her stomach, shoving her further back against him. He was hard as a rock ( _was he dripping inside of that expensive suit, ruining all of her tailors hard work? Did he ache for her? To tear off her dress with his teeth?_ ).

Giving in for a second ( _rewarding his reaction, teaching him with positive reinforcement to lose control, to cede it to her instead_ ), she turned in his arms and let his thigh slide between hers again, pressing every bit of her tight against it, sliding her hips back fluidly as he mimicked her, bumping them together ( _lingering, pulling upwards in a perfect drag of friction before drawing away_ ), before doing it again and again to the beat ( _there was going to be a wet spot on his slacks for sure with the way her panties were being rubbed against him_ ). His gaze burned her, Bucky’s equally heated on her back, as a heavy delicious feeling settled in her belly.  
  
Fuck, she wanted them.

Now Steve's steps were guiding her, pushing her back towards Bucky as she undulated, anybody else on the dance floor clearing the way for them. She arched away, he pulled her back, she stepped to the side, he circled her until she was back in his arms.

Her fingertips were tingling with the urge to touch. She wanted to take him right then and there, slow and almost painful. She wanted to run Steve into the ground, push that stamina and that stubbornness until he begged, until Bucky had to take his place-

The song ended and she stepped away. She wasn’t going to break. She wasn’t going to end this before she absolutely had to ( _she had one shot to make them **remember** her for good_).

_______

 

One grind of his palm against ridiculously expensive slacks later, Steve was cumming, gasping like he’d run a marathon in a fancy gala ball bathroom.   
  
Toni Stark was going to kill him. He was going to die, 6-feet under with a hard-on that could pound nails, **fuck**. He'd managed to splatter the goddamn wall somehow, and his hands were filthy enough that he had no idea how he was going to clean them _(Christ, fuck, fucking Hell, he wanted to rub them down across her skin, shove back into the wet patch on his pants, have her ride him until_ -).  
  
He heard a deep guttral groan two stalls away from him and nearly cried - Toni Stark was going to kill him and Bucky both if the janitors didn't get to them first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't feeling Illuminate Me today, so this exists instead. Have any of y'all watch Kizomba dancing? Cause this is basically what Toni's doing to Steve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQlwjxs6b78&ab_channel=PraveenBombanero
> 
> Also the lovely Rayshippouuchiha's LOW playlist on Spotify inspired this one. Starring Role by Marina and the Diamonds is such a bop. The actual song referenced here is "Girls Like U" by blackbear.


	2. Power and Control

Toni avoids the boys for weeks after the gala. Something about that dance, the fact that neither of them pressed her afterwards, the warmth in their eyes ( _Steve had been distracted on that show by a simple smile...a happy one. A helpless one, not a seductive one_ ) - she can’t look at it. It feels wrong.

So she dodges them and flies to California. She fights beside Rhodey, she drags Happy out to wrestling matches, and she drifts away whenever Pepper tries to reach her ( _she'd caught Pepper with tears in her eyes when she'd looked back once. Just once, though. Toni never looked back again - she couldn't afford to_ ). She takes Natasha on a spy mission where they wine and dine and fight and bleed and **it feels right**. She sinks her teeth into the soft skin between a man’s thumb and forefinger and  **it feels right**. But after it’s over, her and Natasha sit out in the middle of nowhere in a fancy car, a hairsbreadth away from touching and the understanding that fills the gap between them strangles Toni. It doesn't feel right anymore ( _it feels vulnerable and wretched with a sadness that has never belonged to her, not to Toni_ ).  
  
And then nothing feels right, because Bucky gets taken by Hydra. It's always Hydra, because every damn fucking week they have to force Toni to regret not salting and burning the earth because Hydra ALWAYS comes back. That didn't prove shit, though, didn't teach Toni a single lesson. Fuck them. Fuck this. Toni always comes back, too, so Hydra could eat shit.  
  
She lets anger consume her anxiety ( _and the crushing blankness of some worse emotion on the horizon. Toni doesn't often tangle with depression. It's the thing that's come closest to killing her, closer than any person had ever managed. She's terrified of it wrapping its cold fingers around the void in her chest_ ). Anger drives her back to the tower and the friends she’d left there ( _Rhodey’s worried voice fills one ear while JARVIS fills the other. There were some friends she **never** left behind_ ). It spurs her without rest into the meeting room the Avengers never used, the war room, the one where nothing they said would ever pass through any government agency that Toni 'let' watch them.

The Avengers assemble like Toni never left. They strategize, they prepare, and they quickly find themselves at a loss for information. They don’t have a clue about where Hydra had gone, slithering out of their snake holes and disappearing just as quickly with their favourite **prize**. Toni had long since ruined any facility with a chair and Bucky had been systematically destroying what remained, so their leads were few and far between. She almost regretted the damage she'd caused ( _or aided and abetted, in Bucky's case. She'd outfitted his revenge with maps and equipment and dark conversations in darker rooms where Steve couldn't see them_ ).

Still, Toni owned more than just her body and half the country. She owned more than just satellites and trackers and an information network that would make any CIA operative blush. **She owned her mind**. And she owned whatever else she set that mind upon, which currently includes Bucky Barnes heart, mind, and body ( _she would make him remember her, she'd carve herself a permanent spot in his head, and Hydra couldn't fucking stop her. She'd raze whatever groundwork they tried to lay in him, she'd rebuild whatever they broke, she'd rip away the Winter Soldier with her goddamn teeth-_ ).

43 hours pass in a blur of furious abuse of every loophole, backdoor, or outright glaring security errors in any system that gave even a whiff of mythological Nazis. Toni hammered her way into the darkest depths of the Internet, let JARVIS whisper in the ears of people just as dangerously clever as her ( _pulling them in with intriguing opportunities to test her servers, to tease at some of the best guarded information vaults in the world - it was a risk, but she had faith in JARVIS_ ), to recruit in ways Hydra would never see coming. Let them deal with a co-ordinated Hack-a-Thon. Toni was planning to wreck them in ways that they would never completely recover from.

6 more hours pass with Toni placing carefully calculated calls to people who thought they **owned her** , but really **owed her**. She was collecting favours and they’d better be damn sure to pay up ( _architectural plans falling into her hands, politicians giving up the secrets of their benefactors, civil engineers greasing palms over cut corners and suspicious constructions_ ). Toni Stark didn't spread her legs for free, and bad lays had to give her something if not pleasure.

4 hours later find her pacing the gym dressed for a workout she was too restless for, waiting for information to roll in. It will take at least a day, she knows this, but she can’t calm down. She feels like she’s going to jitter right out of her skin ( _the loss of control scrapes against her nerves, lighting up all the worst long-dead parts of her brain. She wanted to grab somebody, drag them into her bed, bury herself in them until she felt like nothing could touch her without her permission ever again-_ ).  
  
She tosses a weight through a floor-to-ceiling mirror. She pounds the glass on the floor to dust. It doesn't help.

Natasha finds her an hour later, pale and drawn. She leaves less space between them than usual, some kind of unspoken comfort, but Toni is a razor’s edge right now ( _all she can do is hurt Natasha. Natasha will let her, a milimeter too close to retreat back behind walls of ice and snow_ ).

”Steve’s a wreck,”  
  
Natasha says, because Natasha knows Toni and she knows Toni can’t take control of herself unless she was taking control of something else,  
  
“He’s not going to stop the next time he heads for the door.”

In Natasha-speak, that was practically 'We all tried calming him down, but no one is as good at it as you. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope'. She was almost begging ( _meaning it was bad, meaning that if they lost Steve they wouldn't get him back, wouldn't get Bucky back either-_ ).

Toni nods sharply, shoulders bunching high around her neck before she forcibly relaxes them ( _a headache throbbing up from too tight muscles anyway. Fuck_ ). She takes a steadying breath ( _the scar tissue from the reactor pulling painfully thin and raw_ ) and asks,  
  
"Where is he?”

________

Toni finds Steve in his bedroom sitting on his bed, clutching a sketchbook while staring blankly into space. His charcoals were crushed to ash in his fist, floating onto a pristine white page with every breath Steve took ( _it reminded Toni of Pompeii. Everything was destroyed as thoroughly as something could be destroyed, but the shadows remained. They tricked you - gave you an illusion of what life was like before the eruption_ ). Steve...wasn’t taking a lot of breaths. He was clearly hovering on the edge of full-fledged panic attack, which somehow made Toni’s own recede like it had never existed in the first place ( _her brain choosing to instead focus on the charcoals she’d jammed under her couch to forget about. Steve had ruined his favourites now, holding a whole case of them broken to bits in his hand, and that was infinitely more upsetting than Toni's own terror_ ).

”Hey there, Blue-Eyes.”  
  
She whispers, kneeling on the floor beside him,  
  
“You don’t look so good. You look tired, like you haven’t been taking care of yourself.”

Steve hums noncommittally, not focusing on her at all. She frowns, moving the sketchbook out of his lap and relaxing his grip on his charcoals ( _tossing them under his bed to deal with later_ ).

”I don’t like it,”   
  
She says, sharp and authoritative,  
  
“When you don’t take care of yourself, Darlin’.”  
  
She braces an elbow against Steve’s knees and digs in for all she’s worth. He finally focuses on her, the familiar fire of rage burning in his eyes. She’s not about to cave to it - no, Toni has always met Steve’s righteous indignation blow for blow. She lets his anger fill her up. She makes it her own ( _a little trick she'd learnt at 17 and had thrown in the face of anyone who had ever tried to patronize her again. It felt dirty, using it here, but Toni Stark always did what she needed to do_ ).

”I don’t like when you carelessly damage what’s **mine**.”  
  
She tells him, riling him up ( _she'd always been good at it. Regrettably good at it)_.  
  
“That’s what you care about?”  
  
He shouts, bending at the waist and spreading his legs to bitch right into her face,  
  
“What, that I’m getting charcoal on your goddamned sheets? Fuck you, Stark, and fuck your posh-“

Toni steamrolls him from her position on the floor, kneeling between his knees,   
  
“I don’t like when you fuck around with my stuff. I don’t like when you beat it up just because you think you have the right to. You don’t have the right to.”

He glares at her, leaning further forward, bracing tight fists against pale blue jeans ( _leaving dark streaks that spread like poison or palladium or-_ ).

”I’m going to make you **remember me** , Steven Grant Rogers. And until you do, **you’re mine**. Stop fucking with my stuff.”  
  
Stop beating yourself up, she doesn’t say. She won’t give him kindness right now. Kindness was never what Steve wanted, not when he was martyring himself for yet another cause. Kindness wouldn’t pull him out of his head, even if it would be better for him in the long run ( _Toni wasn’t the long run, so her kindness wouldn’t be worth a damn anyway. It never was_ ).

Steve stilled, shocked into silence.  
  
Toni had wanted this to come at a better time. She had wanted to savour this, the moment that she admitted she wanted him, when she let Steve and Bucky win their little game ( _just a battle, not the war_ ). It was a one time thing, so she had wanted it to last. But if Steve needed this ( _the skills she had spent years honing into a scalpel_ ), she would give it to him.

She stands up, looking down at him from above, standing right between his spread legs. It’s been 2 days since she got any goddamn sleep, but it’s going to be another day before she can even consider trying ( _before the information trickling in will become a torrent_ ). She doesn’t want to be trapped in her own body anymore and neither does Steve. It’s not ideal, it’s not how she wanted it, but...

Toni steps in until their hips are pressed together ( _a memory flickers, a dance that made her smile, one that ended too soon and would never-_ ). She grips the back of Steve’s head in one hand, gazing down at him with half-lidded eyes.  
  
“Down, boy.”  
  
She commands. And he obeys ( _oh fuck, **he obeys**_ ).   
  
Steve goes down ( _mouth moving over the thin fabric of her workout pants, tongue soaking through her already-dampening panties_ ). He stayed there, too, large hands gripping her hips, face tilted up and pressed into the space between her thighs, making no move to peel the clothes from her body. Absolutely loving what little bits of her he could have ( _would he have fucked her through her dress on the dance floor if she made him? Would he have slid himself over the silk, spilled on the fabric, moaning and spent if she didn't offer him her body? Would he have been satisfied with that?_ ).

Toni shivers, releasing her death grip on the back of his head to rub her fingers gently through his hair. Steve whines, pulling her down further, practically seating her on his face while he was sitting up ( _God, he was probably strong enough to do that, too. To support her entirely, maybe even with his hands bound behind his back-_ ). Her breathing was getting heavy and she was quickly realizing that he would actually stay like this forever if she wanted, scraping his tongue raw on the barrier between them, eager for a taste he couldn't quite get.

Her fingers stop their gentle caress and tighten again ( _she wanted, she wanted-_ ). Steve tugs against the grip, pulling his own hair carelessly as he pressed into her. She pulls him sharply back and he gazes up at her ( _face flushed and mouth wet, utterly debauched without shedding a single layer_ ).

Wordlessly, she yanks off her shirt. It isn’t a slow tease - it’s vicious. It’s calculated. She’s strong enough the tear the seams if she wanted to and she comes damn close. She keeps her bra and panties on, tossing off her pants.

”Work for it.”   
  
She tells him, stretching her arms out over her head, stretching her scar tissue thin, showing off the tattoos that snaked across her torso in a story of betrayal and rebirth that she knew Steve couldn't look away from ( _his hands twitching helplessly in his lap_ ).

”You want the rest to come off,”   
  
She says, heading towards the door,  
  
“ **Work for it**.”

Steve is off like a shot. She doesn’t even come within a meter of the door before he’s picking her up and shoving her against it, kissing her like he’s waging a war ( _his tongue runs lightly over the roof of her mouth, making her shiver violently, then he licks his way in deep before she can retaliate. She wants to make him shake apart until he can’t say anything but her name, but he’s giving as good as she’s got. He swallows her moans and her orders and her whole damn soul. **He’s ravenous**_ ). Steve is surrounding her - arms braced against her waist and the doorframe, hips jammed between her thighs, his body filling up her entire field of vision. She feels ( _safe, secure, present and solid and-_ ) like she’s on fire. Like she’s burning up just to born again.

Toni digs her heels into his hips and hitches herself up, pressing the centre of her pussy right against the bulge in his jeans. She can feel the heat of it even through the layers he was wearing ( _which was entirely too many_ ). She curls her tongue against his, drawing it out as he chases after her, then nips his lower lip harshly. It makes him hiss, moving back just enough that she can catch her breath ( ** _maintain control_** ). She runs her tongue from the corner of his jaw to his ear, toying with it and grinning at the stuttered breathing it earns her ( _her teeth press gently over the delicate cartilage of his ear and she delights in the forward shove of his hips, the way the hand he’d kept braced against the doorframe flies to her throat, smearing black charcoal down it in a drawn out caress_ ).  
  
As Steve struggles to get her to stop while also rutting up against her, Toni snakes a hand down to his fly, flicking it open with practiced ease. She swipes her thumb across the drenched spot tenting his boxers, then presses harder when Steve’s knees go weak.

”Work for it, Blue-Eyes.”  
  
She chuckles, husky and low, rocking her hips forward against the hand she was using to tease Steve’s cock as he stared at it mesmerized ( _he loved her hands, didn't he? Loved when she used them to play with pens and papers. Loved it even more when she used it to play with herself, it seemed. God, she had fantasized for so long about keeping him still, filling herself with her fingers, taking herself to the top again and again and then leaving, telling him to draw what he remembered-_ ).

”Strip off all of my layers,”   
  
She says, nipping his neck,  
  
“Pull them all away until you get to the core of me. Fill up all my empty spaces, Darlin’, give me something to **remember**.”

”Please,”  
  
Steve gasped, rutting up into her hand, her grip still teasingly light,  
  
“Please, Toni. I‘m yours. Let me give everything I’ve got to you.”

”Fuck.” She whispered ( _she’d always fantasized that Steve would dirty talk her to death, but she’d never suspected he’d start it off romantically_ ).

”I’ll give you anything you want”   
  
He promises, tilting his head back further, exposing more throat for her to bruise,  
  
“My fingers, my tongue, my cock. I’ll take you until you can’t walk, and then I’ll carry you to bed. Fuck, I’ll get on my hands and knees if you want. I’m willing to beg for you, Sugar.”

Toni blew lightly on a hickey she knew wouldn’t last.   
  
“Good enough.”  
  
She murmured, tightening her fingers around the head of his dick. Steve cupped her cheek, using his other hand to lock her legs behind his back, then running it through her hair ( _supporting her entirely with his legs, which was unfairly hot_ ).

He kissed her, cradling her face as his hips ground forward again and again-

”Anything you want.”   
  
He says when he comes up for air, locking eyes with her,  
  
“If this is all you want, I can cum here, just like this. You want more and, Sugar,”  
  
He grins at her, fever-bright,  
  
“ **I’ll make you scream.** ”

She leans in - closing her teeth over his lip ( _bright red and glistening. God, Steve would look good with his lips wrapped around the cherry red strap-on she kept tucked in a drawer upstairs_ ) and dragging them back off. She soothes the sting with another softer kiss ( _softer than it should be, softer than she'd ever admit_ ).

"I want more,”   
  
She purrs, a predatory smirk making itself at home on her face,  
  
“And I expect you to live up to that promise, Captain.”

Her panties disappear in a single tug, leaving stinging trails across her hips and between her legs. Steve shifts his hold on her and drops to his knees, letting her support herself on wobbly legs as his mouth wraps around her pussy ( _like every wet dream she’d ever had, Jesus Christ_ ). His fingers squeeze her thighs, massaging the muscles, making her slide further down as his thick tongue slides into her, curling and thrusting shallowly in a way that always made her drip ( _somebody in Bangkok had, no, who, where, did Bangkok even matter? Fuck, **fuck that was good** -_).

Toni lost herself for awhile, a hot heavy haze weighing down her limbs, leaving her gasping as Steve’s fingers fucked her open and his tongue lapped up everything she had to offer, as it flicked across her clit, and he sucked it strongly enough to make her scream and shake right on the edge.

Her orgasm blind-sided her. Her spine arched her right off the door until Steve's massive hands crushed her back against it, his mouth and fingers relentless until she choked on a sob of his name, hands clutching at any piece of him she could reach. She wailed and her nails pierced skin, blood pooling underneath them.  


Steve finally let her go, pressing his wet face against her thighs and emptying his balls on the ground between her feet with a moan of,  
  
“Yes...”

As Toni’s chest heaved and she blinked back tears, Steve’s teeth nipped into her skin.   
  
“Toni,”  
  
He begged,  
  
“Please. **Please**.”  
  
Like he hadn't gotten off a moment ago, face pleading and beautiful. Like it was almost painful for him not to still be buried between her legs ( _which was a visual she was going to take to her grave in HD_ ).

"You said you’d carry me to the bed when I couldn’t walk.”   
  
She chuckles,  
  
“Well, I can’t fucking walk.”

At that, he picks her up, burying his face in her hair. He’s mostly lost his pants somewhere along the way, but he still trips over them as they pool around his ankles. She giggles, reaching behind him to smack his ass in a moment of good humour.

”Nice going, pantless wonder. Ruined a perfectly good bit of erotica, there.”   
  
She says. There’s a flicker of vulnerability in his eyes even as he presses her into the bed that has her hastily adding on,  
  
“I thought you were supposed to be ruining me right now?”  
  
With a haughty arch of her brow ( _teasing, trying to bring him back in close, to soothe whatever hurt she just created even though this was just sex. They were just fucking-_ ).

Instead of just plunging forward like she had wanted ( _expected_ ) him to, Steve takes a second to just...look at her.

”What?”   
  
She croaks, throat suddenly tight and dry. Steve’s eyes are suspiciously shiny as he whispers,  
  
“Just trying to convince myself that I can really have this. That this is...real.”

She doesn’t get any time to deflect her way around that statement because Steve is sliding into her, long thick and velvety heat. He pushes in slowly and she savours every second of the burn ( _every part of her body tingling and fucking throbbing with every beat of her heart. She wanted, fuck, she wanted **everything** , she wanted Steve to bury himself inside of her and never come loose, she wanted to take him with her everywhere she went, she wanted-_).

Steve dips his head, pressing his forehead against hers, pulling his hips back the barest inch before sliding forward again, filling her completely. His eyes are closed and he looks...happy. He looks so much softer than she'd ever seen him. Younger. More like he fit into this time ( _into her life_ ).  
  
Toni averts her eyes and tightens up, squeezing him until a gutteral sound punched right out of him and his fingers fisted the sheets. She swivelled her hips, corkscrewing him like she would if she ever got her mouth of that cock, and tore her nails down his back so that he bucked into her.

”I want more.”   
  
She gasped, and that was all she needed to make Steve fuck her into oblivion. And when he tried to stop to regain control, to keep himself from getting off too early, she rode him until he filled her and hardened again. She pushed and pushed and **pushed** until she broke all of his limits, until he left bruises everywhere he touched, the black from his hands smearing every inch of her skin, until he couldn’t say anything but a broken litany of her name.

And then...they slept ( _stained in black and curled into each other's arms_ ).  


  
________

 

They didn’t speak of it as they dressed, as they showered together, rubbing the evidence of what they had done and graphite from their skin. They didn’t speak of it as Toni disappeared to the war room, a terabyte of compressed information waiting for her.

They didn’t speak of it as she found Bucky’s most likely location, tucked away in a wastewater plant in Washington that JARVIS had pegged as Hydra through and through with the help of some less-than-reputable friends.

As they entered the quintet, Steve caught her arm and said her name like a **prayer** instead of a **memory** and she cut him off.  
  
“We’ll get him back, Steve.”  
  
She tells him and then shrugs off his hand. Bucky was the one who would stay with Steve forever, who had stayed with him through thick and thin. More than this, more than what they had done, Bucky was top priority.   
  
His safety was worth more than a memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter belongs to Bucky~ I know a lot of people want a new chapter of IM, but man oh man the comments there have been throwing me off lately. This one is a nice destresser even if it doesn't quite seem to be most people's vibe. Tbh though I always suspected Steve and Bucky would like being bossed around a little. They're both also super goal-oriented...sooooooooo, I can see them being very demanding subs (who regularly make fake bids for power) for a lady like Toni.


	3. I am not a Robot (I'm a Ruin)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s difficult to say goodbye /  
> And easier to live a lover’s lie /  
> And I’ve tried to say Babe /  
> I’m gonna ruin you if you let me stay /
> 
> You don't always have to be on top /  
> Better to be hated /  
> Than loved loved loved for what you're not /

Bucky wakes up cold and furious. Hydra always follows him around, sniffing and snapping at his heels, but they’ve never managed to snatch him before. Their success feels like an insult of the lowest kind ( _was he getting rusty? If he could walk out of a damn freezer and fight, he didn’t see why working with the Avengers would soften his skills_ ). He's groggy and angry when some idiot tries to touch him.

He bites the moron, the drugs pounding through his body ( _how did they even manage to-_ ) allowing him decent facial mobility even if his coordination was shit. He gets a mouthful of a man’s hand ( _hairy knuckles snagging on his teeth in the worst way_ ). He crunches bones - little fragments stab at his gums unpleasantly, the sound of them grinding between his molars more distracting than the angry German screaming. 

Immediately, Bucky is put under again. As he sinks down, he worries that he wasted this chance to escape. Petty satisfaction falls over him like a blanket however at the taste of blood in his mouth, so he decides not to regret it too much ( _they were all doomed to die at some point now that they’d taken him. Previous experience with other Avengers had proven that. Even if Bucky didn't get out of this, he wouldn't go down alone_ ).

They keep him down for a day while they wonder what to do with him. Fucking morons didn’t even have a plan. There were no chairs for them to reset him with. They didn’t have any technicians who could understand whatever crazy shit Toni and Shuri had done to the arm (c _ackling as they poured a golden membrane, thick like honey, between every panel of vibranium black metal. Opening that, opening his arm, was voluntary now. And there’s no way he’d voluntarily do it for Hydra - they could kiss his shiny gold fist_ ). He was worse than useless to them.

So they keep him drugged ( _his tolerance is building though, morons_ ).  
  
Bucky hears them bitching every time he floats to the surface. They aren’t even a key Hydra cell - no wonder he didn’t see them coming. Absolute randoms, biochemists who got a little too big for their britches ( _that explained how they’d managed the drugs, though. Bucky wished smart people would stop working for Nazis. Wakanda had beautiful technology that didn't come from aliens and evil)_.

By the end of day two, though, they’ve managed to get their mitts on somebody competent ( _how unfortunate_ ). They tase him awake because they know exactly how he feels about electricity and some familiar faces grin down at him. They know the code words, and though Bucky knows that won’t do shit, panic starts ripping into his brain anyway with tiny hooked fingers. Some kind of fear must’ve shown in his biometrics ( _because he sure as fuck doesn’t let it show in his face_ ), since those familiar faces filled with sadistic glee.

_______  
  


 

The next four hours are torture. Unoriginal and **excruciating**.  
  
The Winter Soldier had been built to take more than that.  
  
They ply him with electrical shocks or burns and, even as all of Bucky’s pain receptors abruptly stop blaring at him ( _maximum threshold crossed, last ditch measures taking hold_ ), the psychological damage remains. They’re probably trying to make him hallucinate, but jokes on them. He won’t hallucinate anything useful, nothing those fuckers could use against him, because the main thing on his mind lately wasn’t himself or Hydra or anything particularly Winter Soldier-y.  
  
Fucking morons.  
  
They didn’t build him, so they didn’t know how hard it was to get Bucky to focus on something he didn’t want to. They didn’t have the right motivators. Speak of the devil...

Bucky grins with blood-stained teeth at Toni Stark, who smiles back at him more terrifyingly than he could ever pull off. God, he loves her. What a nightmare of a woman ( _a storm in human shape, a forest fire that blazed through everything, bringing new life from destruction_ ).

”Hey there, Winter Wonderland,”  
  
She murmurs in that whiskey smooth voice of hers ( _Bucky had always loved the films of the 20s filled with women with dark smooth voices, deep and rich like liquor he couldn’t afford. He couldn't afford Toni either_ ) sweeping past the Hydra officers to stand before him,  
  
“I’ve always wanted to strap you to a chair, but even I find this situation a little distasteful. My fantasies have been ruined.”  
  
He laughs, drawing the attention of the idiots keeping him here.  
  
“Aw sweet thing,”  
  
He drawls ( _loudly and not at all subtle_ ) just to make them uncomfortable,  
  
“Ya got me blushin’ under all this blood. Is the blood ruinin’ the mood? Cause I’d letcha cut me up, Darlin’. You’re more beautiful than any knife. Sharper, too.”

The main technician ( _the fool who had last defrosted him before his grand adventure in beating Steve to shit, getting deprogrammed, fleeing the country...good times_ ) frowned at Bucky. Toni rolled her eyes, gesturing in a 'can you believe this guy?' motion usually reserved for press dockets.

Bucky snorted and glanced at the tech, muttering,   
  
“Don’t fucking kinkshame me, asshole.”

He laughed all through the next shock to his system. Even when his muscles seized too tightly for him to make a sound, he let them know he thought this whole situation was hilarious.

Hallucination-Toni was sitting in his lap when he finally caught his breath and got his heart to calm. Well, got it to calm a bit. He couldn't manage much more than that, not when she was wearing that golden gala dress he’d been dreaming about ever since she’d danced with Steve ( _he had been simultaneously more turned on and more jealous than he’d ever been before in his life. She looked like a Valkyrie in chains of gold, dark hair spilling down on bare skin because that dress was backless and sinful. He loved the way her curls blended with the dark lines of her tattoos. He wanted to leave a bitemark in the heart of every bloom, marking her as his in a way no one else would be able to see-_ ).

He was shocked again ( _fucking **rude**_ ).

Toni straddled his hips and combed her fingers through his hair. It was the best feeling in the world. It was like falling at terminal velocity - he was hurtling towards a violent end, but he was weightless. She tugged his head back and he went willingly ( _she nearly never did this and he was too damn proud to beg her to_ ). Her lips brushed his ear as she whispered,

“You know I’m going to put them all down, right? Take a shovel to the ground and put whatever’s left six feet under.”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but that shouldn’t get him hard as a rock. He swallowed heavily.  
  
“They took something that belongs to me...”  
  
She said, pulling his hair sharply while tracing one engine grease-smeared hand down the chain of his dog tags,  
  
“So they’re going to die. Unless...”

She shifted to look him dead in the face ( _a fallen angel or a goddess for a two man religion_ ),  
  
“You kill them first, James.”

He thought about it, really thought about it, because there was nothing in the world better than putting Hydra in the ground and showing off for his best girl. Still...  
  
”I’d ratha watch ya in action, _malen'kiy lezviye-ka_. I love it when you’re vicious.”

"What are you talking about?”  
  
The technician cut in, apparently sick of Bucky ignoring him for a much more appealing sight. Bucky didn’t look away from Toni, the blazing determination in her eyes, the angry set to her mouth...

”Toni’s gonna destroy all of you...inventively. Though Steve might get you first. He moves fast these days.”

Goon number 17 gawped at him, then had the audacity to bray like a donkey in a pathetic excuse for a laugh.  
  
“The Captain may be coming for you.”  
  
He tells Bucky, smirking and exposing some scurvy-ravaged snaggletooth,  
  
“But Stark? I bet Stark is glad to have you gone. Does she know who killed her parents yet, Soldier? We must’ve scrambled your brain harder than I thought if you think she cares.”  
  
Bucky stares at him while Toni reclines on his chest, practically using him as a throne, the cheeky princess.  
  
“Wow...”  
  
She says in a bland monotone, gazing around the room,  
  
“These lot are duller than Hammer’s last engineering conference. I bet they think we’re fucking.”

Goon number 17 continues,  
  
“Bet she won’t be happy when she realizes her sex doll crushed daddy dearest's throat. Though I'm sure she's used to choking on you, huh Soldier?”

”Bingo.”  
  
Toni guffaws,  
  
“He probably thinks I’m sleeping with Rhodey, too. How boring. Absolutely no imagination in these kidnappers, nowadays. If I stole you, I’d at least accuse you of something interesting. How about art theft? Cause you belong in a museum, baby.”  
  
She leers and  Bucky stifles a chuckle, though it still earns him a punch in the stomach. Familiar faces are re-entering the room ( _did they leave the last time he was being shocked? His focus was shot_ ).  
  
“Why’s that so fucking funny, huh? You broken or something?”  
  
Goon ( _number...Christ he wasn’t actually going to bother labeling them all, goon whatever_ ) asked, drawing a thin flat blade ( _a letter opener? Please, get some class_ ). Bucky rolls his eyes,

”Even if she didn’t already own the rest of me,”  
  
Bucky says, ignoring the discomfort as blood begins to run freely down his chest ( _he was finally getting a little woozy from all of it. Only took them two or so days_ ),  
  
“She definitely owns my arm. Patented and everything. You think I’m Hydra's dog? This,”    
  
He **would** gesture emphatically if his hands weren’t strapped down. Hydra always had to ruin everything. Compromising, he nods at his metal arm instead,  
  
"Is my collar and leash, dumbass. I’m always going to go back to her. She’s gonna come in here,”

Blood wasn’t running so freely anymore. Had he been stabbed? What were these idiots even doing now- oh. One of them had the book out. He bared his teeth and rising panic was fighting for attention ( _it won’t work it won’t work it won’t-_ ).

"She’s gonna kick down your door, and where Toni goes Steve goes, so they’re both gonna kick down your door-“

” **Longing,** ”

”And raze the very earth you stand on. Stevie ain’t no golden boy - he’ll make you suffer. You’re cockblocking us both right now-“

” **Rusted,** ”

”And he tried to kick my teeth in when we were 17 and I walked in on him and the neighbor's daughter. Pissy little thing-“

” **Seventeen,** ”

_ ”Why is he still talking? He should be-” _

”Stevie genuinely tried to strangle an officer that got in the way of a hook up with Peggy-“

” **Daybreak,** ”

Bucky fell silent when Toni pressed a finger to her lips. He heard something - some vibration in the walls that was deeply familiar. It practically lulled him to sleep most nights now, powering the building he considered home. He fixated on the door.

The rest of the words tumbled out of familiar face's today lips in a smarmy eat-shit tone. Then familiar face #? asked him if he was 'ready to comply'.

"Only If you wear red and gold armor, Darlin’.”  
  
Bucky says darkly, with an edge of wild fervour ( _c'mon, c'mon..._ ).

The heavily reinforced steel door, one that had clearly been designed to tolerate heavy artillery, peeled off the wall like skin off a grape. It was the most beautiful sight Bucky had ever seen - wait - the armour was stepping through the spot the door had been, door crushed in one fist, with Steve at its back looking absolutely murderous. Now THAT was the most beautiful sight Bucky had ever seen.

”Get wrecked.”  
  
Hallucination Toni whispered and God, Bucky was so gone on her it was sad ( _she’d been spouting memes for weeks after the last time she’d run a high school workshop. Peter had taught her more, and the ridiculous delight she took in them, dropping them like a little kid drops a cuss, was the most precious thing on the planet_ ).

"Get wrecked.”  
  
He sagely agrees as the room descends into utter chaos.

Toni shoots the technician first ( _on sight, actually. It’s fatal_ ). Bucky wishes she’d left him alive so he could tell the guy, 'I told you so' just once. Steve’s shield crunches familiar face #?'s ribs at the same second Toni picks him up and hurls him at a wall ( _she comes just shy of pulverizing him. Either way, that man was going to experience some brain damage_ ). The rest of the goons are decked left and right by Steve, one gets strangled a little ( _hallucination Toni raises an eyebrow at Bucky. He shrugs at her - he’d meant what he’d said about the cockblocking_ ), and the sound of breaking bones is music to Bucky’s ears. The whine of Toni’s repulsers is a constant, but so is the incredibly threatening click of a shoulder mounted silenced gun that he’d never seen her use before ( _each shot was cleaner than it had the right to be, being positioned like that. He was going to respond to that click from now on like Pavlov’s dogs. He was taking Toni to a shooting range ASAP - he wanted to see her hands on his guns. Fuck, he wanted to see her disassemble every part-_ )

Toni steps on a fallen man’s hand, grinding the bones there to dust. Ah, it was the guy Bucky already bit ( _his baby understood him so well_ ).

Everything was settled in less than a minute, though time was dragging for Bucky as he listed to the side in the chair he was strapped into ( _not that he minded too much. They were putting on a great show, but he was also bleeding and pretty burnt-_ ).

Toni retracted her helmet, and oh, THAT was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. She was setting world records here - tousled hair, kiss bruised lips, fine crows feet above dark circles, and a fiery hatred in her eyes that quickly cooled to protective determination when she set eyes on him...

”Hey there, Winter Smoulder,”  
  
She said, approaching him with purposeful strides,  
  
“I’ve always wanted to strap you to a chair, but even I find this situation a little distasteful. My favourite fantasy has been ruined.”

He chuckles, disbelieving ( _and a little relieved_ ) that Fake-Tony was so close to the real deal.

”Hey there yourself, love.”  
  
He responds, delighting in the way her eyes widen even as he slumps even further forward in his seat, blood stretching his skin as his back sticks to it,  
  
“Tie me up whenever you want. Gift wrap me - I’m yours.”

He gets to see her blush ( _the most beautiful sight in the-_ ) before he blacks out good and proper.

_______

  
The quinjet is absolutely silent on the way back to the compound. Toni sits in the pilot's seat, trying desperately to ignore Bucky sleeping and surrounded by the Avengers.

He'd called her Love. That was an old-timey endearment, though. It didn’t mean anything.

He'd also said he was hers. She **knew** that. She’d intended for that to happen. Hell, she’d declared it herself.

Just... he'd sounded exactly like Steve ( _face flushed, cock straining between his legs, eyes soft and warm with affection_ ). It didn’t matter though, he’d been high off of electricity and blood loss. She could empathize - she’d been through that more than enough times herself.  
  
**It didn’t mean anything.**

”Toni,”  
  
Oh shit, Steve was talking to her. Toni gripped the console before her tightly and didn’t reply. She prayed for an interruption, but JARVIS stayed stubbornly silent, the absolute traitor.  
  
Steve sighed, then knelt by the chair, dropping his head onto her knees and wow, ok, she wasn’t prepared for that.

"Uh...”  
  
She says intelligently, unconsciously lifting her hand and massaging her fingers into his scalp ( _she glared at her hand when she noticed. It was a traitor to the rest of her body. She should chop it off and replace it - she had the technology_ ).  
  
“Steve?”  
  
She questions, not even sure what she’s trying to ask. She doesn’t get an answer though, because Steve is fast asleep and wow, huh, he’s drooling a little on her undersuit. Gross, yet cute. Groot.

She glances helplessly over her shoulder at the rest of the Avengers, but none of them are looking back. Natasha is holding Bucky’s metal hand tightly.

Right. Right - Toni has to get them back to the tower safely. Everything else comes after ( _Bucky's safety was more important than a memory_ ).

_______  


They land with a whisper - it’s the most gentle landing Toni has ever executed. She tries to focus on how she did that, if she could eventually bring the armour down like it actually weighed nothing...basically, she tried to be the absolute last person off the jet.  
  
Steve is the first to go. Immediately after waking he just...strides all heroic-like up to Bucky, holding over two hundred pounds of pure muscle in a fireman’s carry, and goes ahead into the penthouse. To Toni’s room.  
  
Of course.

Toni can’t really bring herself to run away this time. She doesn’t think she can. JARVIS was clearly siding with Steve if the way every door in his way slid open said anything ( _he'd even run a bath for Bucky, the traitor, that absolute little sneak_ ).

She waits by Bucky’s bedside in silence with Steve. Flickering lights in her peripheral vision draw her gaze to Steve’s white-knuckled fists after who knows how long. His short nails had dug bloody crescents in his palms ( _personally, she preferred to jiggle her leg. Much more satisfying, way less painful_ ). She ignores it, but JARVIS presses her with lights and the irritated open-shut motion of the vents.  
  
Eventually, against her better judgement, she takes his hand. She won’t look at him even when he kisses her knuckles ( _the barest whisper of skin on skin_ ). It didn’t mean anything.  
  
**It didn’t mean anything.**

Bucky wakes up after ages _(her leg and her hand are asleep_ ) and grins at her. It’s the same dopey smile he always got whenever he was at his most relaxed - it sort of listed off centre, curling further up the left side of his face and exposing his canines. She’d sent him a cat meme about it once ( _some snaggle-toothed Russian blue that looked like a little vampire. He'd printed it and kept it tucked in his tac gear, waiting to get shot just so she'd find it, that human disaster_ ).

She'd been staring too long. Bucky’s regard is warm, **pleased** , and he coaxes her in a bit closer with a crooked finger.

”What’s the most beautiful sight in the world doing with a roughed up man in her clean white bed?”  
  
He teases. He’s been cleaned up a bit, but the burns lacing his neck, hands, and bare chest are still prominent. She can’t help but trace them all in her head, dedicating them to vengeful memory even as he tries to joke with her.

"It’s not a proper scandal,”  
  
Bucky says while reaching for her,  
  
“Unless you’re in the bed, too.”

Then the playful light in his eyes darkens as he sees her hand in Steve’s ( _realizing something all too quickly_ ). Possessiveness skitters through his whole demeanour like the shadow of some feral beast, Bucky showing his teeth to Steve for a fraction of a second, muscles bunched like he was stewing for a fight, and suddenly his metal hand is wrapping around her wrist.

”I’m gonna ruin you, babydoll.”  
  
He growls, yanking her onto the bed as she tries to avoid elbowing any of his injuries.  
  
“I’m gonna **ruin you** if you let me stay here."  
  
He draws in a sharp breath, clearly trying to control himself. His gaze is intense,  
  
"Tell me if I’m yours, Toni.”

Steve is still holding her other hand, standing now to accommodate her new position.  
  
“I’m yours.”  
  
He tells her, squeezing her hand tightly.

Toni is stunned, but they’ve both just been through a high stress scenario. They were scared of losing a teammate. Though the language...not that she’s **theirs** , but that they are **hers**. It implied she would take responsibility for them. That they were giving her something-

”You had your one night, Steve.”  
  
Toni says and Steve grips her hand even more tightly ( _smearing blood across the palm as her bones complained to her brain_ ),  
  
“You were mine. Now it’s just a memory.”  
  
She can’t say he still is. She doesn’t know that for sure and she wasn’t in the business of lying to Steve ( _ **never** to Steve_ ).

She looks down at Bucky, meeting his intense scrutiny head on.  
  
“That’s what it’s going to be with me,”  
  
She tells him ( _tone cocky and just the right shade of come-hither_ ),  
  
“One night and a memory you’ll never forget.”  
  
Bucky blatantly takes all of her in, reads her very soul through her skin, and then picks it apart like a puzzle. She resisted shifting uncomfortably away, extremely aware that both of her hands were still caught and that she was caged in.

Something settles between them. Bucky's gaze is dark with intent ( _the full brunt of the Winter Soldier’s knowledge of the filthiest parts of human nature, that cold willingness to indulge them, to see them_ ). His grip on her wrist is bruising.

”I would kill anyone who tried to take you away from me.”  
  
He says fervently. Steve makes a put upon sound ( _exasperated with murder. They’d ruined Captain America_ ) and Bucky gives him an intensely murderous look.  
  
“I’ve planned Justin Hammer’s death out more times than I can count. The only reason I don’t kill him is that the police investigation would be long, messy, and would interrupt your life. Even if I made it look like a suicide, you’d catch hell for it anyhow.”

Toni feels a little sick. Had she manipulated Bucky into this somehow? Justin had tried to feel her up more times than she could count, but had she made it sound like something she couldn’t deal with ( _the idea of that weakness rankled_ )?

”I would dig up Obadiah Stane’s grave and dump his remains in an elaborate series of acid vats if you asked me to."  
  
He pauses, head tilted in a parody of a cutesy childish gesture of thought. It's incredibly threatening.  
  
"I would do **anything** you asked me to.”

An ominous feeling of 'I fucked up' settles around Toni’s shoulders heavily. It was familiar, however really goddamned unwelcome right now. Bucky had just been dealing with a Hydra kidnapping, it made sense that he was a little-

”And I would do that because I **trust** you. Steve **trusts** you. Toni, please-“

He grips her face in his hands, eyes wild with fervent longing and too much ( _pain, anger, sadness_ ). He kisses her. It’s...its achingly **gentle**.

” **I love you**. I’ve been in love with you for ages before you seduced me. Tell me I’m yours, **please** , because I don’t want this to be one night.”

He whispers. Toni choked, squeezing her eyes shut,  
  
“Jesus Christ Barnes, you don’t owe me love.”

”I don’t owe anybody anything.”  
  
He growls, hands still on her face, close and...dangerous. But never to her. Always...achingly **gentle** to her.

"If anything, the universe owes me a favour and I’m just trying to cash it in.”

He says and kisses her again, stubble dragging across her skin this time, rough and stinging.

"Even if you didn’t want Steve, I’d still want ya.”  
  
A trickle of Brooklyn sneaking in the way it always did when he got too emotional to control himself ( _or when he was too relaxed, face open and happy in a way she so rarely saw, except when she got him high in the sky in a hug n fly_ ),  
  
“If you only wanted Steve, I’d fight to make you change your mind. I’d only stop if you asked me to.”

He kissed her again, much more soundly, a hint of teeth in it. Steve’s hand clenched tightly around her wrist, thumb brushing over her racing pulse.

”If you gave me one night, I’d never stop coming back. You give me one night and I’m yours for life, no matter who else you fuck. You give me even an inch...”

His hands wrap around her waist, seating her firmly in his lap,  
  
“And I’ll take...”  
  
He drags his tongue with weighted intent along the side of her neck ( _over all kinds of important veins and arteries_ ). His skin is so much hotter than a normal human. It's practically scalding her.  
  
“ **Everything** you’ve got.”

She drew a shaky breath, refusing to back down in the face of this...crazy devotion. She knew that loyalty and Bucky were one concept, but she hadn’t...she hadn’t earned this. It was twisted. It was because she handled him-

"Who says you can?”  
  
She demanded, twisting her wrist out of Steve’s grip and hovering her fingers threateningly over Bucky's metal arm. There’s a multi-tool between them, one she kept tucked carefully into her sleeve always.  
  
“Who says you can take anything from me I don’t want to give you? Who says I’ll let you come back? That you’ll even bother if I drag somebody else into bed?”

She grins at him, all teeth, and anticipates the buck of his hips underneath her. She rides it like a goddamned **professional**.  
  
“You can’t make me do a damn thing, Barnes.”

"Don’t want to make you do anything.”  
  
Bucky murmured, hands falling away from her waist to clench the sheets instead,  
  
“Can just do my best to make you see how good we could be. Show you what I could give you. I’m **hungry** for it, sweet thing, _malen'kiy lezviye-ka_ , and I’ll **always** come back, but I’ll starve for ya if it makes ya happy.”    
  
He means it. It isn't enough, though ( _nothing ever is_ ).

”Beg me.”  
  
Toni says abruptly, looking over her shoulder at Steve who has been watching them with wide sad eyes,  
  
“Beg me for one more night.”

Bucky's hands slide back up her thighs and she braces them tightly against his hips, rocking forward just enough to pin those hands underneath her. Bucky watches the motion attentively ( _he’s wearing an expression she only ever saw in the sniper's nest, seconds before taking a shot_ ), murmuring,  
  
“Give me one night, Toni. Make me yours."

”Please, Toni.”  
  
Steve says, wrapping his hands around her shoulders from behind, keeping her steady where she sat astride his best friend. Bucky’s hips grind upwards, his hands twitch beneath her thighs, and Steve supports her as she leans back to let her ass settle into Bucky's lap.

”Keep his hands still.”  
  
She tells Steve, feeling an electric thrill of power when he immediately moved behind the headboard, pinning Bucky’s hands to it in a bruising grip.

”You can do better than that, Sergeant.”  
  
She says, looking over Bucky's shirtless body ( _still injured, mostly healed and showered, but still injured and stretched out on the bed with flushed cheeks and a tent in his pants and-_ ).  
  
“Or do you want me to forget about you? You’ll come back, but I’ll have another man’s cock in my mouth.”

Something horrifically dangerous flashes through Bucky’s eyes. He lifts his chin defiantly, growling,  
  
“He’d have to be worth your time,”  
  
He laughs roughly,  
  
“And you’d have to tell me not to make him **disappear**.”  
  
Steve’s knuckles are white from the strain of holding Bucky still. He looks almost as predatory as Bucky, but he’s still holding on. It makes a coil of not quite guilty satisfaction uncurl in Toni's stomach.

”A lot of men aren’t worth my time.”  
  
She responds truthfully, sliding back down the length of Bucky’s legs onto crisp sheets, watching as Bucky strained forwards hard enough that Steve grunted. They both watched her closely ( _ready for a show, ready to obey_ ).

”You think you’re worth it?”

She asks, stretching out next to him ( _just out of reach_ ) and hooking her fingers into his waistband. She tugs on it experimentally. Bucky spreads his thighs and lifts his hips, smirking at her like the rake he'd been all those years ago,

"I know I am, Sugar.”  
  
Fuck, that made the next thud of her heart heavy and her pussy clench tightly. Steve had called her Sugar, too, and the confidence in those words did **things** to her. She would have wrecked Bucky when he first joined the army. Would've made him desert just to come crawling back into her lap-

”I’ll make you remember me. I’ll give you anything you want and more. I’ll make you scream if you let me get my mouth on you, Sugar, bet Steve already did...”

Bucky didn’t miss anything, did he? He was tracking the flush crawling up her neck and licking his lips.

”Bet that’s why he calls you Sugar, too, huh? Mmm, you probably taste sweet, leaking all over my mouth and down my throat till I could drown in it-“

Jesus, She was wet. The memory of Steve’s attentive tongue was suddenly very prominent in her mind.

"You know...”  
  
She trails off, not to be one-upped while peeling Bucky’s pants down to his knees. She flicks out the blade of her little multi-tool and rolls it between her fingers, catching the light and pulling Bucky in like a moth to flame. His pupils dilated, black drowning out everything but a sliver of blue-grey, and she smirked.  
  
“It’s not fair.”  
  
She meticulously sliced away his boxers, tossing them to the floor ( _revenge for the panties Steve had ruined_ ). She straddled one of his spread thighs and watched a clear bead of precum slide down his shaft ( _her mouth watered. It had been too long since she’d had someone with a really beautiful cock_ ).  
  
“Steve got a taste, but I never did. Do you think you’re sweet, Sugar?”

Bucky’s thighs clenched up underneath her ass and he whimpered quietly, teeth sinking into his lower lip.  
  
“I’m going to bring you to the brink,”  
  
She says, flicking her gaze from Bucky’s cock to his face,  
  
“And then I’m going to keep you there. So you’d better leak nice and pretty for me...Sugar.”

Sweat was already soaking through Bucky’s sheets, the muscles in his arm trembling like a leaf in the wind. Or a tree. God, he was thick all the way through. She could comfortably seat herself on his thighs, and his dick was going to push her practically non-existent gag reflex to the limit. She wasn’t afraid to admit that she was a bit of a size queen and, bless Thor and his pantheon, Bucky was built like a fucking coke can.

She delicately wrapped her fingers around him ( _she'd have to two-hand him if she was going to get all the way round_ ). Toni lifted a single finger, bending the shaft up just a bit, and let the flat of her multitool blade smack against a vein right at the base. Bucky’s cock jumped in her hand, throbbing as he moaned deep in his throat. She patted the cold metal against him again ( _noting the way his hips shoved forward into the sensation. Bucky always was a weapons slut, eying up her workshop the way he did_ ).

”I’m gonna ruin you.”  
  
She whispered, setting the blade carefully out of the way and settling herself comfortably between his legs.  
  
“You already have, _malen'kiy lezviye-ka_.”  
  
He said, voice gone scratchy and deep, like he was holding back a scream. She loved it.

Toni eyed another drop of precum and, right as it began to drip down his balls, she snaked her tongue out after it. A salty taste, not even a little bit sweet, flooded her senses as she followed the trail it had left behind. Bucky thighs shook when she flicked her tongue over the head of his cock, then locked in place when she dug her tongue into the slit.

”Fuck, **fucking Hell,**  Darlin'-“

She closed her lips over him, giving a long firm suck, and Bucky’s voice went high and reedy.

" _Trahni menya_ , Toni-“

She waited for Bucky to take a deep breath and meet her eyes before taking him deeper. She savoured it as slowly as she could bare. Bucky’s hips twitched desperately, tiny aborted movements he was too disciplined to execute. Once she had him brushing the back of her throat, she let him just barely slide in.

”I’m in Hell, Stevie,”  
  
He breathed,  
  
“I can’t even put my hands in her hair. I need-“

She swallowed and Bucky’s whole body jerked.

”I need to hold on to something. I feel like I’m going to die. I haven’t been this light headed during a blowjob since-“

”Charlize? In France? I remember you complaining about losing all feeling in your hands because you forgot to breathe-“

If it were anyone else talking over her blowjob she’d be offended. If she were even an inch less confidant, she’d be worried. As it was though, Toni found it...weirdly endearing actually. 

She scraped her teeth all along the length of Bucky’s dick on her way up. She made it hurt just a little bit, squeezing his balls lightly in her hand to shut him up. Fuck, they already felt heavy ( _she wondered how often Bucky got off to thoughts of her? How often he spilt all over his hands- how long had it been since he’d last pleasured himself?_ ).

”France is where I learned to do that.”  
  
She said, placing a butterfly kiss on the balls in her hand, flicking her tongue between them when she heard Bucky moan appreciatively,

“Unlike you, I paid attention when French whores were blowing my mind.”

Bucky laughed breathlessly and Steve simply gaped at her. She raised an eyebrow at him in challenge before sucking the base of Bucky’s sack into her mouth.

His back bent straight off the bed, though he kept his thighs open around her, knowing better than to snap them shut ( _his heels digging into the sheets and Oh Lord she could hear the metal of the frame warping_ ). She could feel the way he thrashed just from the way the bed rocked - she hated to miss a beautiful sight, but the task at hand was much more interesting.

Bucky's balls ( _heh...Bucky ball_ ) tightened, drawing up against her lips, and she snaked a hand up to close a tight ring between them and his dick.

"No...”  
  
Bucky moaned,  
  
“No, no, no-“

She squeezed her fingers even tighter and nipped harshly at his inner thighs, nuzzling them in apology afterwards and gazing at him through hooded lids.

”Focus, Bucky-babe. Eyes on the prize - it's a one time offer.”  
  
She said. Once she got what she wanted, she started in on him for real, alternating between long pulls down her throat drawn out slow and boiling hot, and a fast punishing pace where her tongue snaked over every square inch of him. She loved the taste. She loved the heat and weight of him against her tongue. She loved the headrush that came from having him sprawled out before her, begging and nearly incoherent with hunger.

After the first near miss, after which she had teased the head of his cock for several long arduous minutes ( _wrapping her lips around it, flicking her tongue over the crown in little kitten licks, just barely touching him_ ), Bucky dutifully warned her every time he got close ( _“Toni, I’m there, I’m there, please just let me cum-“_ )

She kept him on the brink long enough that even Steve was breathing in short pained gasps, his hips rocking against the headboard ( _eyes glazed, lips wet, cheeks flushed just like when he had-_ ).

Satisfied with her work and burning for more, Toni rose to her knees. It took a long moment for Bucky to lift his head from where he had finally laid it ( _eyes squeezed shut no matter how much he wanted to keep looking at her. He was too close to the edge_ ).

By the time he had, she’d already pulled off her clothes and had his cock pointing up from between her thighs, her ankles crossed over his chest. 

_______

  
She squeezed her legs around him, the angry red of his cock contrasting harshly with her golden skin, and Bucky couldn’t resist thrusting into that warmth. He couldn’t hold back, even though he knew if he waited she’d probably reward him, would probably give him something better to fuck...

But he couldn’t cum. He cried out in frustration, saying her name, epithets, Russian phrases he had forgotten he knew - there just wasn’t enough friction. It wasn’t what he wanted.

”You’re soaked,”  
  
He tried, desperate but cunning in a fight he didn't want to lose,  
  
“I can feel it sliding down your thighs. It’s driving me insane - I can smell you, feel you, hear the way you’re moaning real quiet, don’t think I can’t, Sugar - but baby I can’t taste you. I can’t sink in for real like this. Can’t open you up, hollow you out and fill you up again until the only thing that’s on your mind is **me** -“

Toni rocked forward with her eyes closed, head thrown back, long golden throat all exposed and perfect for biting, Bucky’s cock sliding just a bit further up her thighs, just a bit closer.

"Can’t make you scream like this, babydoll. Can’t bruise you up, can’t press my metal hand into your pussy as deep as it goes to feel every single bit of you before I finally fuck you stupid-“

Closer, please, closer.

"I want to cum inside you, Sugar, paint you up so that nobody could mistake you for anything that isn’t **mine**. I’d plug you up if you let me, keep it all inside you-“

He could feel the damp heat of her now. He ached for it. He ached for it like a missing limb all the way down to the tips of his toes.

"Would you go to one of your fancy meetings full of my spunk, Sugar? Reeking of sex and the Winter Soldier? God, look at you. I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands to myself - slide in a plug just to pull it right out and fuck you again-“

Steve's grip had gone completely lax and he was bent double over the bed frame, struggling harder to breathe than Bucky was. He’d feel bad for him ordinarily if it wasn’t Steve who had helped keep him there at the edge for long enough that his body was screaming at him to bury his teeth in Toni’s neck and to screw her within an inch of her life.

She rocked forward again and Bucky snatched his hands away from Steve, gripping her hips. In a moment that physically pained him, he stilled her.

”Let me fuck you,”   
  
He begged,  
  
“Toni, please. **Say yes**.”

His dick was dripping like a leaky faucet, inches away from where he wanted to bury it. This was how he was going to die. Hydra cells couldn't take him down, but Toni Stark could kill him by not touching him.

"What if I say no?”  
  
She asked him, teasing with an edge of something...more. Bucky wanted to die. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as he shook off the tidal wave of want, of surety that she loved him and wanted this-

"Anything you want, you get.”  
  
He tells her,  
  
“Even if it’s me cryin' on this bed or halfway to a heart attack. I’m greedy as Hell though, so I want more. Fuck, I want all of ya.”  
  
She narrows her eyes at him, then smiles. The relief is like a shot of the finest whiskey back when he could actually get drunk - it warms him all the way down.

"Have at me, Sugar.”  
  
She said smugly ( _with a touch of something more. **Something good**_ ).

Bucky lunged, picking her bodily off the bed with his metal hand, shoving his hips underneath her. He slammed home in an instant, human hand shaking violently with the abrupt change in sensation after so long on the brink.

_______

”Shiiiiiiii-“ 

  
Toni moaned at the stretch of him, clenching and riding the burning sensation that made colourful sparks of pleasure burst in the corners of her vision. She should've know Bucky had her number, knew exactly how rough she'd like it. Should've known he'd give it to her.  
  
"Harder.”  
  
She orders him, and Bucky sets the most brutal pace she’s ever had. She’s riding him, but his arms and hips are taking the brunt of the workload. She’s surprised he can even move after the last hour she’d put him through.

Bucky tilts her hips, making her lean back into the support of a metal hand that quickly closes ( _surprisingly gently_ ) in her hair against her back. He surges up to kiss her chest, sucking Hickeys into her tattoos as his cock angles upwards, skimming over her g-spot with every powerful thrust. He slides by it once, twice, and then-

She screamed and shook apart, wrapped tight in his arms ( _her face pressed against his neck, his thundering pulse in her ears_ ). She could barely come down with him still slamming into her, though he’d adjusted the angle ( _giving her a break_ ). The second she met his eyes, it changed back, ripping away her senses all over again.

He kissed her, deep and filthy and hungrier than even Steve, an edge of feral satisfaction to it.

Then he bit her neck all the way up to her ear, whispering,  
  
“ **I’m yours** , Toni. And now **you’re mine**.”

A burst of liquid heat filled her. Both Steve and Bucky were red hot when they came ( _it was the most shocking and arousing thing to discover, felt like sinking into a hot bath while getting the best kind of loving_ ).

Bucky's metal thumb rubbed over her clit, a quick back and forth motion men never seemed to do right but he was doing perfectly, God why, and she toppled over the edge again. **And again**. Bucky was stuffing her to the brim and didn’t seem to be planning on ever stopping, muscles shaking but solid as she milked him completely dry.

A sharp inhale and a groan of her name told her that Steve had gotten off too ( _had he even gotten his pants undone? His hands were free by the end..._ ).

”You were s’posed to keep him still...”  
  
She slurred, shaking a fist vaguely in Steve's direction. Bucky chuckled, easing them both down to lay in the bed, slipping out of her at last. She...Christ, she was **gushing**.

”'m not sleeping in the wet spot, Buckles.”

Bucky tucked his chin into her shoulder and she felt him smile against her neck.  
  
“Steve’ll sleep there, Princess. Don’t worry about a thing - you’ll be sleeping on top of me anyway.”

”Ok no,”  
  
Steve said, voice gravel-rough in a way she wanted to record and play on loop ( _or use as a ringtone_ ),  
  
“None of us and sleeping here, you heathens. I think this mattress needs to be incinerated.”

Bucky huffed and rolled over, crushing Toni beneath him. She cracked an eye open to glare at him, still riding high on hormones but exhausted as fuck, and he ducked in to kiss her nose. When it scrunched, he looked absolutely delighted, kissing it again. He kissed her forehead, brushing his lips over her eyelids, her cheeks, her ears...

He eased himself down, laying his head on her stomach and curling around her. Her fingers automatically began combing through his drenched hair and his eyes fluttered shut in bliss.

"As cute as this is,”  
  
Steve sounded exhausted,  
  
“And I can’t believe I mean that in reference to BUCKY, I brought a new mattress from the guest room. I’m dumping it on the floor.”

Had Steve been gone? Toni blinked and found herself scrubbed halfway clean, thighs still a bit sticky, laying on a new mattress and half-sprawled over Bucky's warm body.

Steve appeared, settling down on the other side of her. A massive arm draped across her and Bucky both, tucking them into Steve’s side ( _his back was facing the door, ready to be the first in line if anyone came in. She felt safe. Protected. Steve had a way of doing that to her_ ).

” **I love you** ,”  
  
Steve said, dropping a kiss into her hair,  
  
“You gave me a home.”

His breath caught,  
  
“You believed in me, even when you were hurting yourself to do it. You made me feel like a person again.”

Toni wound her fingers through his, squeezing because she couldn’t trust herself with words. She didn’t know what this was. She didn’t think it would last. She didn’t know how she would feel in the morning, but...

”Anything you want, Love, it’s yours.”  
  
Steve murmured.

But she wanted this...for at least one more night. She could let them grow tired of her if they had to ( _it was better to be hated than loved for what she could never be. If they dropped her, Rhodey and JARVIS would break the fall_ ).

She hoped they didn’t, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Careless Whisper blasts in the background*
> 
> Hey did you guys know I wanted to include a choking scene with Bucky's dog tags? Good times, good times. Like using a tie as a leash only...better. So much better. Too bad it didn't fit into this!


	4. The Dog Tags Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since so many people asked for it and it was clattering around in my head anyway, here's the choking scene I cut from the original Starring Role. Consider it a bonus chapter of sorts!

The lines between fantasy and reality blurred as the dickwad electrocuting Bucky got a little too trigger-happy. Hallucination Toni was there and then she was gone. He was conscious and then...   
  
Well, there was one memory he was particularly attached to. It was unsurprising that he’d topple into it with the way that his body and heart ached right now ( _Toni was on her way, beautiful and vengeful, keeping him grounded when his tired brain wanted to float away_ ).  
  
He looked around the scenery of the tower that he knew he shouldn't be seeing right now. It was nighttime in the nastiest part of winter. He remembered this - he’d been...antsy in those months.  
  
Toni had given him her resources and he had wreaked havoc for a long time, but right around here he had lost his taste for paltry revenge and gained a taste for blood.

  
______  


  
It had been months. Months since he’d been dragged in from the cold, kicking and screaming, by Steve. He wasn’t adjusting well to civilian life. He knew that for a fact. Steered clear of any Avenger who tried to befriend him, tried to involve him in pedestrian activities ( _he was never going to tell them that action movies and games just made his brain kick into teaching mode. That swipe of the knife would never kill a man. That shot wouldn’t be enough. Always double tap, always be sure, always make sure that even the best healing won’t let someone resurrect from what you’ve done-_ ).   
  
Except for her.   
  
Toni Stark was a storm in human form. It was the only image that fit. Her calm, her long silences, her observation of him ( _that bright blue gaze piercing right through him, dragging his sins right out of the dark_ ) - they were all just lulls before the next explosion. It could be a fit of violence ( _revenge rolled off her tongue far sweeter than it had ever dripped from Bucky’s teeth_ ), creation ( _the world born anew from a lighting strike, a forest fire, a hurricane calling a tsunami to fore, or Toni Stark's descent into her workshop_ ), or generosity ( _children riding on her back, high into the sky, their laughter ringing in Bucky’s ears like gunshots_ ).   
  
She was unpredictable. She’d been beaten and cornered enough times to know cruelty intimately, to cradle it to her chest and nurture it until she could use it best. She may not be a weapon, but she was a creator of them.  
  
And Bucky, well...  
  
They had an understanding of sorts.   
  
He used to sneak away for days at a time, roaming Europe with stolen vehicles and stolen identities. He’d find hydra agents in the streets, in their homes, in holy houses and soup kitchens, and he would ruin them. It would never be the same thing twice.  
  
The only thing that didn't change was the fact that it was a secret. Steve would never forgive himself if he knew what Bucky had turned in to. Maybe somebody would try to put him down, and Bucky would hate to see how that would work out ( ** _for them_** ).   
  
Nothing stayed secret for long in Toni Stark’s house, though. Not with an all-knowing AI tracing your steps wherever technology lived and breathed ( _and here, in the tower? It really did live and breathe_ ). Jarvis made him nervous until he realized the only person he was loyal to, the only person he would expose Bucky’s secrets to, was Toni. And even then, it would only happen when he needed help.  
  
He **had** needed help and he’d gotten it. Toni had arrived in the church he had been pinned down in ( _gunfire a constant hail over his head as civilians scattered, obscuring all of his sight-lines, forcing him to curse the cathedrals and the ones who had built them_ ). She’d arrived like a Valkyrie, decimating anyone who came near her and tilting her head at him in a way that screamed,

 _“This is your mess. Clean it up. Prove yourself.”    
  
_She’d gotten the civilians out of the way and he’d laid waste to anyone who stayed, staining holy ground with blood so thick its stains absorbed the light ( _he’d proven himself alright_ ). Hydra soldiers, always full of nasty surprises.   
  
Toni had burned the entire historical building to the ground.   
  
“Always safer to incinerate blood.”   
  
She’d stated nonchalantly before pinning him with an unreadable look,  
  
“Especially yours.”   
  
She’d hidden the evidence that he was ever there. He got the distinct impression she’d done it before. The Winter Soldier rarely had to hide his own tracks in a firefight, had always had a team scrubbing everything clean, and so he hadn’t even thought about it. She’d thought of it, though.   
  
It probably spoke volumes to what was wrong with him that he’d fallen a little bit in love with her for that.   
  
Now he struck Hydra bases instead of individual agents. He did it with her blessing and her maps. Her AI in his ear. Her covering his tracks. Returning to her house, blood rinsed from his hair by her hands, wounds treated by her supplies...  
  
It all came back to her.   
  
He craved more every time. Blood, violence, revenge, redemption...  
  
**Her.    
  
**He didn’t want to stain her hands with his sins. Didn’t want to close his mouth overs hers, thrust between her legs, fill her with his poison. Dig his teeth into her skin and **mark her as** **his** until they both went to Hell.  
  
Fuck, he did want that.    
  
He wanted that badly enough to kill for it. So he did - he killed to keep the thoughts at bay, he tore apart countless men, dragging Hydra down to Hell in a frenzy that she couldn’t hide anymore ( _hoping, praying that somebody would take her away from him_ ).   
  
Bucky pressed his forehead against the glass windows of the common room and tried to steady himself. The urge to go on another mission was boiling his blood. He’d been in her home too long already - her scent had already saturated his belongings, he could **taste** her with every breath-    
  
A hand closed around the back of his neck and his knees went weak. A warm body was pressed tightly against his back.  
  
“Calm down, Bucky Babe.”   
  
Toni whispered in his ear, one of her palms flat against his stomach, flexing against it as it tightened,  
  
“Your anxiety is giving my anxiety anxiety.”   
  
He wants to flip them around, crowd her against the glass, have her hands do more than hold him over his shirt. **He wants-  
  
** She turns him around, pressing him to the window.  
  
“Your thoughts are too loud for me to sleep.”   
  
She says, half-joking but half-serious. There’s a storm brewing in her gaze. Bucky wants to take her with him to burn something, anything, to the ground, but instead he snarls wordlessly, grinding out,  
  
“I want a mission.”   
  
Toni tilts her head ( _“This is your mess. Clean it up. Prove yourself.”_ ) and lifts one delicately arched brow. He grabs at her shoulders ( _gentling his grip at the last second, turning it into an accidental caress despite the suddenness of the motion_ ).  
  
“I want,”  
  
He growls, right up in her face, looking down at her from above,  
  
“A mission.”   
  
The storm breaks. Quick as a flash, her fingers are buried in the chain of his dog tags. She gives them a twist, shortening the loop around his throat in warning.  
  
“You got shot three times yesterday. Everyone is catching on.”   
  
She says,  
  
“So do you REALLY want a mission, Mr Roboto?”  
  
He steps off the window, practically nose to nose with her,  
  
“I want-“  
  
She twists again. The chain presses into his skin and he pauses. Her eyes have gone dark ( ** _interested_** ).  
  
“I want-“  
  
He starts again, and the chain tightens further, restricting his breathing slightly. He bends at the waist to relieve it, bringing himself down to her height.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
She asks, soft as silk and deadly as sin. He can’t look away from her face. She’s looking at his dog tags, idly twirling them between her fingers, and now he can feel the chain biting in a little more every second.   
  
“I-“   
  
He pauses, draws a shallow breath,  
  
“I want a mis-“  
  
Her hands twists viciously and he can barely inhale. Her free hand smooths into his hair tenderly, tucking his head into her neck.  
  
“What do you want, Bucky?”  
  
She asks and his scrambled brain can barely string together a sentence, let alone an answer. He feels hot all over. It’s difficult to breath, the oxygen isn’t enough, but he doesn’t make any move to take her hands off of him ( _doesn't want her to ever stop touching him, doesn't want her to ever stop speaking to him in that voice, tightening around him_ ).   
  
He sinks to his knees and she goes down with him, keeping the pressure on his neck steady and sure.  
  
“What do you want?”   
  
She’s coaxing him now, petting his head even as the chain tightens another increment. It’s intoxicating. She’s barely touching him and he yearns for more. He wants her to use the chain to pull him right into her lap. Wants her to use it to guide him wherever she wants him to go. Wants to lose a little more air for every mistake he makes. Wants her to ditch the dog tags entirely, squeeze his throat with her bare hands-  
  
“Bucky?”   
  
She asks, tightening all the way, his dog tags fluttering with his pulse.  
  
“You.”  
  
He rasps,  
  
**“I want you.”**    
  
A single loop loosens. He can breathe, but barely.   
  
“I want you.”  
  
He repeats fervently, kissing her neck and gasping when the chain tightened again, holding still even when his hips wanted to rock forward.  
  
“I don’t want a mission.”   
  
He says and the chain loosens.  
  
“I want to stay here.”   
  
It loosens further.  
  
“I wanna take care of you-“  
  
It tightens completely and Toni tugs on his hair, forcing him to look into her eyes ( _a Valkyrie come to take him away, “Prove yourself.” By God he wanted to, would worship at her feet if she’d let him-_ ).  
  
“You’re misunderstanding who’s in power here, Buckling.”   
  
She tells him, tender even as he chokes, even as euphoria bubbles in his blood and his hard cock scrapes against the inside of his jeans.  
  
“I’ll take care of you.”   
  
She says. Toni lets go of his hair and unwinds the ball of metal in her hand, keeping the chain pinched into his skin, then reaches down to press his dog tags sensually to her lips.  
  
His cock twitches and his pulse jumps. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe but he pressed more tightly into her grip anyway, wants to please her-  
  
She kisses the tags again ( _once over his first name, then over his last_ ) and he whines, high and reedy in his throat. He's wasting precious air but he wants more.   
  
She lets him go. He gasps for air and ruts his hips forward once, twice, and shudders all over as she watches him.   
  
“Good boy.”  
  
She praises him and a warm glow diffuses through his entire body. Fuck, he feels high. It isn’t until she’s gotten him a glass of water, massaged his throat, and tucked him into bed that he realizes what she’s done.  
  
He was willing to kill to keep her away, but she’d just gotten him closer. She'd gotten him to admit what he really wanted.   
  
And she hadn't said no to him.


End file.
